Pressure Secrets
Defaults: None.
Prerequisites: Trained By A Master and Pressure Points 16+.
This skill represents knowledge of the most vulnerable vital points of the human body. It allows you to maim and kill by crushing and tearing vital organs and nerve clusters with deadly precision.
To use this ability, you must make a successful unarmed attack. This attack is at -2 in addition to any hit location modifier (see Hit Location). If you hit, make a Pressure Secrets roll.
On a success, any damage that penetrates DR is doubled – or tripled if you targeted the vital organs. In effect, your hands and feet have become impaling weapons!
You can also use this ability with locks and similar grappling attacks. This represents knowledge of exactly where to apply pressure to tear or sprain joints and ligaments. After applying the lock, make a Pressure Secrets roll. On a success, double the damage, shock, or harmful effects of the lock for that turn.
This skill is unrealistic and potentially unbalancing. The GM should carefully weigh its impact before allowing it, and may wish to make it very difficult for PCs to learn – or even restrict it to deadly NPC opponents.
Modifiers: Physiology modifiers.
Martial Arts
In a cinematic game that generally ignores Realistic Injury, the GM may opt to apply those rules selectively to Pressure Secrets attacks. For instance, Pressure Secrets might be able to target the hit locations defined under New Hit Locations and count as an impaling weapon where favorable – notably, when attacking veins and arteries. The GM might even rule that if a Pressure Secrets attack inflicts twice the injury needed to cripple an ear or a nose, it plucks off the body part, much as a cutting attack would. To make Pressure Secrets truly frightening, the GM could ignore Lasting and Permanent Injuries for most attacks, even deadly high-tech weapons, but enforce those rules when Pressure Secrets inflicts a major wound on the neck, skull, veins and arteries, or vitals.